<p>Any reason Duke is not on the list? Strong engineering program.</p>
<p>It is really hard to apply the “match school” concept to top rung candidates because the appropriate schools are maybe 7-15% acceptance. It becomes so stochastic that you could be rejected by any one of them. But apply to 8 of them, and surely a number of them will hit. But based on last year’s experiences, expect to be on the waitlist of some of them as they work through their applicant pool. I know of a top candidate last year who was waitlisted at five top schools, and only admitted at William and Mary. As the season progressed, he received admissions offers from WUStL, Vandy, and Duke.</p>
<p>Oh, I forgot to mention, why isn’t Stanford on the list? It’s another reach but it’s well worth it considering only MIT and possibly Caltech are better for science/engineering. It also has amazing financial aid.</p>
<p>That also leads me to this point: I don’t know a lot about financial aid, but MIT seems to have much weaker financial aid than the other tippy-top schools (HYPS). I’m not sure if it’s the case for everyone, but my friend who got into Harvard, Stanford, and MIT received about $10-15k more per year from Harvard and Stanford than he did from MIT. Just a heads up I guess?</p>
<p>Even Stanford is less generous than HYP, at least according to their calculators - Stanford’s calculator offered me a good 10k less than Yale’s or Princeton’s</p>
<p>Yelopen, thank you so much for your comments. I knew that Caltech loved high stats, but I wasn’t aware that Dartmouth had that same affliction, very helpful. Otherwise, I see things just about the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chicago falls off the list and in fact I agree with that sentiment, but that is not my decision, I just get to veto things for financial reasons. </p>
<p>Olin is an interesting school we visited, and my son spent a day going to classes. My wife and I loved it - because we knew they would take good care of our son. My son left less enthused than when he arrived, it seemed so small to him. It’s selectivity has been dropping, so what seemed like a long shot, now seems very possible.</p>
<p>Stanford in many ways would be a great option. I just don’t think he could get in, they just don’t seem to emphasize what he does well. He has said that he wants to apply to no more than ten schools, so that doesn’t leave much room for reaches.</p>
<p>Why not Duke? I guess because if he got into Duke, he would almost for sure get into Rice. In that case I think he would prefer Rice. I hope we can visit, but it isn’t by any other target schools, so it just keeps getting pushed back, twice we planned to visit, but ended up going elsewhere because we could combine other school visits.</p>
<p>RocknPiano - yes, that’s what I meant. Funny story (now at least) he took his last subject test (Chem) in June. He was sick that weekend and felt like he did terrible. He came home and plopped on his bed and sulked and generally felt sorry for himself for the next few hours. I was on a bike ride and he called me up and said he wanted to cancel his score. I told him to wait at least a day. The next day he felt better, but was still convinced that he did poorly. He was shocked he got an 800 he was just hoping for a 750. In the end it makes no difference, I have a hard time imagining where that would tip the scales.</p>